Classroom Escape
by: Jessica Luo
1. Why I Made This Game
I decided to create this game because I love to do escape rooms and use my logic to solve puzzles and riddles. I chose this game opposed to other games because, personally I am not a big fan of "shooting games", so I chose to do a game which uses more logic and reasoning opposed to a game like League Invaders.
2. What I Learned
I learned that many people choose NOT to read the directions, which made it difficult to accommodate the testers because they did not get how to play the game. I received lots of feedback, some of which included spelling errors, not specifying certain things, and making the instructions more concise. So, I went through all of my code and spell-checked everything, made things more specific, and made the instructions more concise and easier to read.
3. Architecture of My Game
I have a couple different components of my game. Some of which includes the pictures, the clues, the clickable items, the logic behind each clue, a timer, and a clicker counter. And I have 8 classes that interact with each other to complete a task of creating a unified game of an escape room. The rooms interact with each other by changing the frame to a different screen when you hit a certain button. It also interacts with each other because when the user hits an object, the panel signals one of the classes to display the clue.
4. Technical Implementation
I structured my code so that most of my code was in the Game Panel and the rest of the code were little bits and pieces to accommodate the panel. I am most proud of the challenging aspect of my game. It was fun to watch people stumped and angry because the clue was difficult to figure out. I made this game difficult by coming up with clever clues and hard items to find. For example, for my first clue, it says, "...today is WEDNESDAY...turn in the hw in the pink bin..." I subtly implied that the bin had an association with Wednesday and a pink bin.
5. Most Challenging Part
The most challenging and most time consuming part of creating my game was making hit boxes for each of the items. This part of the project was not only time consuming, it also needed to be exact or else the hit box wouldn't be in the correct spot. After I tested the hit boxes, it was not working
because I had to track where the person was clicking and the screen was off set which made the hit boxes' y values to be incorrect. So when I edited my code, I made it so the hit box would actually be on the item.
6. Future Fixes and Updates
If I were to continue working on my game, I would make it so that the hints knew which clue to give, instead of having the user type in the hint number because the user could cheat and just ask for the last clue. I would also change it so that you had to click the items in order because sometimes the user might click items that skip some clues.